Patreon Acquires Kit

July 05, 2018Wyatt Jenkins

The time has come for creators to be compensated fairly for their work, and here at Patreon, we’re on a mission to make that happen. Patreon helps fund the creative class by powering membership businesses for creators. The monetization system supporting the internet is broken, valuing advertisers, eyeballs, and engagement instead of creativity. Creators are awakening to this flawed approach and looking for alternatives to grow their fan base.

One of the most effective ways creators build a growing and sustainable membership is by selling merch. Patrons want something personalized, a physical artifact to connect them to the creator — and the more unique the better. But today, merch is unnecessarily painful for creators; we’ve talked to heaps of creators who spend time stuffing envelopes, researching the lowest prices on shipping, and take endless trips to the post office. We want to make merch easy. A simple solution empowering creators to easily add merch to their membership business, and connect deeply with their biggest fans.

Enter Kit.

Kit is a team of creator-centric badasses from NYC made up of designers, photographers and musicians who couldn’t be more aligned with the Patreon mission. They’re a strong product team that has been thinking deeply about problems creators face for over three years, and during that time, they’ve built a beautiful product in Kit.com. When we met Kit founder Camille Hearst and her team, we were impressed with the product they built, the active community of creators they support, and how much thought they put into the needs of creators. We knew immediately we wanted to work with them.

“We launched Kit a little over two years ago with a simple idea: help people discover the products worth getting — and create a new kind of experience where your creativity and expertise actually earn you money,” said Camille Hearst, co-founder and CEO of Kit. “We’re elated to join Patreon and work on merch, and look forward to developing features that will give creators a simple way to deliver their products to their members. It’s an honor for us to continue building tools that enable creators to share their life’s work while earning a sustainable living.”

What’s Next?

Being creator first means doing right by creators, and Patreon and Kit are committed to ensuring all the content links and revenue from Kit.com continue to operate. Over time, we’ll figure out how to integrate the best ideas from Kit into Patreon. And, of course, we hope all the creators on Kit know they are welcome to join Patreon; we’ll roll out the red carpet to help you build a membership powered by your biggest fans. For more information on how to create a Patreon page, email us at [email protected]

We’re confident that in the future, being a creator will be one of the best career choices a person can make. As we see now with the two million patrons on our platform, creators can count on the steady membership revenue that comes from a set of loyal patrons who want to see them succeed. Sending merch is complicated today, but remains a key element to the success of membership programs. Together with Kit, we’re going to make it simple by inventing a way to fulfill automated “merch for membership” that will help creators stop stuffing envelopes and get back to full time creation.